A Rogue of One's Own

He closed his eyes, waiting for the heat to fade from his limbs. The look in her eyes, such a clash of want and fury. When they would finally come together, it would shake foundations, or, at the very least, break the bed.

He felt a watchful gaze on him, and a quick glance around located the source: the large orange menace Lucie had tried to save earlier. It had crammed itself backward into a nook in the wall opposite. Cats. The smaller the box, the more attractive they found it. He came to his feet and winced and adjusted the front of his trousers.

The daft animal purred when he approached. It didn’t resist as he carefully extracted it from the nook and lifted it into his arms.

He couldn’t have bolstered his reputation among the respectable matrons any better than by strolling into the reception room holding a grousing cat. The Marchioness of Hampshire sailed at him through the crowd with the force of a schooner, exclaiming incoherently while taking the animal off him and pressing it to her bosom. A growing ring of spectators circled them, murmuring praise.

“The stable, you say?” the marchioness cried. “She could have been trampled. Why, you could have been trampled, Lord Ballentine.”

“It was a risk, but I persevered,” he said modestly, eliciting a soft chorus of appreciative sighs.

Lady Hampshire sniffed. “I daresay, mayhem was to be expected over the course of this party, given the nature of our hostess,” she muttered under her breath, shooting an indignant glance in the direction of the new duchess, who had kept a tactful distance during the reunion. “But the loss of a pet is going decidedly too far,” her ladyship continued. “This is a highly delicate animal! Anything could have happened.”

The moment Lady Hampshire took herself and her growling pet to her rooms to recuperate, the Duchess of Montgomery started toward him. He dipped his head to acknowledge her superior station with a wry smile. During their last encounter, she had been Annabelle Archer, a country bumpkin from Kent, and he had approached her, out of sheer ennui. She was also a remarkably beautiful woman: tall and radiant with a latent sensuality that was vigorously bred out of the ladies in his own class. . . .

An icy glare positively skewered him. When he looked up, his eyes locked with those of Montgomery, who stood at the very opposite end of the room. Bother her and I shall kill you, said that look, and so he dipped his head at His overly protective Grace, too.

The duchess assessed him with cautious appreciation. “Thank you for bringing the cat back, my lord.”

“I did what anyone would do.”

“She has reportedly mauled several footmen and a groom, but it appears you are uninjured?”

“Of course. I have a vested interest in keeping my looks as they are.”

“Of course,” she murmured. If she weren’t a duchess now, she would have rolled her eyes.

Welcome to the world of petty constraints, Your Grace. Her stakes in this house party running smoothly had to be exceedingly high—and society matrons like Lady Hampshire could make or break a woman’s standing.

“My lord,” she said. “I shall have to impose on you once more, I’m afraid.”

He obligingly inclined his head. “Impose on me, duchess.”

Her gaze strayed to the group of ladies nearby, watching them from behind erratically fluttering fans. “Due to popular demand, I must ask whether you would read us one of your poems in the drawing room this evening.”

A flicker of resistance licked through him. His days of writing pieces that held meaning, fueled by the now irretrievably lost Sturm und Drang of his youth, had cumulated in A Pocketful of Poems years ago. Selling the works was one matter, reciting them quite another— it reminded him of the florid fellows who held forth about their three-decade-old adventures in Crimea because they had not done anything worth mentioning since. But soirees and recitals had been inevitable the moment he had revealed himself as an author.

“If it pleases the hostess, I’m keen to oblige,” he said.

This gained him a grateful nod. “The request is specifically for ‘The Ballad of the Shieldmaiden.’”

“Naturally.”

Just then, the duchess’s gaze slid past him, and he sensed someone approaching.

“Lord Ballentine.” The sweet voice made him go still.

He stood with his eyes fixed on the duchess.

The last time he had spoken to the young woman now hovering by his arm, she had been nothing but an acquaintance. She was considered a diamond of the first water, and he had to be the only man in the kingdom who’d rather not make conversation with her. But the moment had been inevitable. He plastered on a smile and lowered his gaze to meet the sky-blue eyes of his would-be fiancée.

Chapter 17

Lady Cecily.”

She was gazing up at him, long enough that he couldn’t miss the admiration in her eyes, and then she shyly looked away. Then she peeped back at him from beneath lowered lashes.

She had grown into a lovely thing since he had last seen her, with a healthy glow on her cheeks and charming curves that would fill his big hands nicely. Her nose was sprinkled with pale golden freckles, which she had not taken the pain to bleach as was the custom. If she weren’t a lamblike, gently bred virgin, and his intended at that, he could probably muster some interest. A lot of ifs, that.

“Lord Ballentine,” came a reserved voice. Lucie’s mother was flanking Cecily like a thin, cool counterpoint to her niece’s golden sweetness.

“Lady Wycliffe. A pleasure to see you.”

Her gaze snagged meaningfully on his cravat pin—a large lapis lazuli from Kabul. Rochester’s list hadn’t specified anything about cravat pins.

“You are the hero of the hour again, it appears,” she said without inflection.

“I was in the right place at the right time.”

“A useful habit every man should acquire,” she remarked.

Impossible to tell from her expression whether she approved of her husband’s ward being betrothed to him of all people. She had once been his mother’s closest friend, but her fine-boned attractiveness was permanently marred by a vague, deep-seated antagonism she must have cultivated for decades. Not unlike her daughter, except that Lucie’s antagonism was lovingly honed like an arrow and had a clear target.

“I’m so glad you saved the poor creature,” Cecily said softly, “all the ladies here are.”

He suspected she knew about their arrangement—there was something in her eyes that struck him as . . . conspiring. Grand. She shouldn’t be in favor of a match that was never going to be. Had she not been a parentless ward but Wycliffe’s daughter, he doubted the man would have offered her up as his bride. Wards, as a rule, were more easily passed on to a reprobate than an earl’s direct blood.

“Come, Cecily,” said Lady Wycliffe. “We are going to take another turn around the room. Lord Ballentine, you will surely be so kind to regale Cecily with the heroic tale at dinner. She is your table partner.”

“Splendid,” he said reflexively, his gaze shifting to the duchess, who quietly stood by. She was in charge of the seating order. Had she been informed about the whole betrothal business?

Did Lucie know? was the next logical question.

His body tightened with an acute sense of alarm.

Lucie must not know. She would never come near his bed if she thought he was going to marry her cousin.

As he searched the crowd for her icy-blond head, he spotted Lord Arthur’s sulky visage near the Rembrandt on the east wall. Slouching next to the Marquess of Doncaster himself.

He felt Cecily’s intrigue, though she was not really looking at him, and he excused himself to go and have Avi brush the cat hair off his jacket.

Two hours later, he found himself boxed in between Lady Wycliffe and Cecily, and Lucie was three tables away, neatly out of sight in the sea of heads between them.

Every one of those heads was slightly tilted to the head of the main table, where His Royal Highness Albert Edward, Prince of Wales and future king of England, was seated next to the duke as the guest of honor. The air of the vast dining room was quietly vibrating with hushed excitement as every interaction between Bertie and Montgomery was noted with Argus eyes.

Only Cecily was wholly uninterested in the prince. “It was such a surprise to read that you were behind A Pocketful of Poems,” she said, her big eyes seeking his.

“I imagine.”

She looked like a polished doubloon in a white and gold evening gown, occasionally making a dainty pick at the piece of venison on her plate. Her aunt was unnaturally distracted by her own table partner. Giving the love birds some time to engage in conversation, wasn’t she?

“I don’t remember ever seeing you write anything during those summers at Wycliffe Hall,” Cecily prodded gently.

Had she noticed him at all, then? She had still been a girl during the last holiday he had spent at Wycliffe’s, no older than twelve, all gangly legs and braids.

“Writers often work at night,” he said absently.

He had gleaned that Lucie was seated between the Greenfield heir, Zachary, and Lord Melvin, an outsider in the House of Lords thanks to his overt support of women’s suffrage. Melvin was Lucie’s age and still unattached. They were probably going to flirt outrageously under the pretense of a policy debate or some such. A twinge in his right hand drew his attention to the fact that he was gripping his fork as though he meant to strangle it.